Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Saturday, February 19, 2011 5:46:40 PM
The Robert E. Lee cult is making a comeback. While not nearly as repulsive as neo-Confederates, the Lee lovers have a tendency to heavily edit history to make their actually-admirable-in-many-ways hero perfect, which he was not. When documentaries attempting this appear on reputable television channels like the Military Channel, many of us are tempted to protest. I entered a short-form protest re the program listed in the MC's schedule as "Gettysburg: Battle". They have a limit on how much commenting you can do, though, so I couldn't fit all of what I wanted to say. The projected full version appears below:
The program listed as Gettysburg: Battle was dreadful and inaccurate. The script repeatedly called Robert E. Lee "undefeated". Even if you ignore the early West Virginia campaign, Mechanicsville and Malvern Hill were indisputably defeats. In fact, the Confederate disaster at Malvern Hill foreshadowed Lee's bloody blunder known to history as Pickett's Charge.
General Meade was at the time of his promotion relatively unknown to the public, but he was not "undistinguished". He was, in fact, rated highly by his brother officers. His performance at Gettysburg seldom gets the recognition it deserves.
The casting of General Richard Ewell was absurd. The very hairy actor (or re-enactor) in the role bore no resemblance to "Old Bald Head".
Culp's Hill was hardly undefended at the end of the first day of battle. There was a full division of Union troops on the way to the hill, dispatched by temporary Union commander Winfield Scott Hancock when he spotted the potential threat to the North end of the line. Many Lee idolaters like to blame Dick Ewell for the failure to take the not-exactly-undefended height, saying that the late "Stonewall" Jackson would have read Lee's order as a positive order to attack. Two points:
When Ewell stated that his men had been fighting all day and were exhausted, he was telling the truth.
It is the commander's responsibility to know his subordinates' personalities. If Ewell required a positive order to attack Culp's Hill, then Lee should have known this and given him one. A discretionary order is just that -- discretionary. Ewell was within his rights to decline to attack on those circumstances, just as McPherson was within his rights not to attack in the absence of positive orders from Sherman at Resaca, at the begin of the Atlanta campaign.
A Confederate victory at Gettysburg would not have necessarily have won the war for the South as claimed. Vicksburg still would have surrendered to Grant’s army on the 4th of July. The blockade would have remained in place. President Lincoln would not have given up, and was not up for re-election for over a year. The war would have taken a different course, but since the Emancipation Proclamation had made the American war a war that Europe couldn’t safely touch, the end very likely would have been the same.
This whole production reeks of “Lost Cause” romanticism, with Lee as the perfect military leader foiled by fate and by a subordinate’s blunder. In fact, Gettysburg was a well-earned victory for the Union Army. It pains the Lee cult to admit that for those three days in July of 1863, General George G. Meade was a better general than Robert E. Lee, but it’s true, and Pickett’s Charge proves it.
I was pleasantly surprised at one fact the documentary got right, though. Yes, the Southerners were fighting to preserve slavery, whether they owned slaves or not. At least the producers settled for a “Lost Cause” production, instead of the full neo-Confederate production. So that’s some consolation.
Sincerely,
The Hermit Crab